Windows 7 any good on older hardware ?

doopydug · 25 Jan 2011 at 19:54

I have a few P4 3ghz machines with 1gb ram in my office and they arent tasked very hard running Windows Xp at the moment but I am kinda wanting to upgrade them all to the same OS as the newer desktops.

Is this sufficient spec for Win 7 or will it slow down drastically compared to XP?

Blue160 · 25 Jan 2011 at 21:32

Try it and see.

You can get a 90 day trial of Windows 7 enterprise off the Microsoft website. Can't find the link right now as I'm on my phone, but google should be your friend.

AceTK · 25 Jan 2011 at 21:36

Ok I have my laptop with win7 and thats

p4 2.8
512mb ram
radeon 9000

runs ok at desktop but suffers at games and suffers with driver support

another laptop

centrino 1.6ghz
2gb (had 1gb)
integrated gpu

runs ok but was a little sluggish until i installed more ram

so from this i guess faster cpu with less ram does better than slower cpu with more ram but really id recommend you boost the ram up if you can. 1gb min 2gb + ideal

Raumarik · 25 Jan 2011 at 21:39

It'd run the OS fine but would struggle to do much else without taking a performance hit. Oddly enough I did a Windows 7 install on a mates PC recently with a similar spec (half a gig more RAM though but only a 2.6GHz CPU) and although it was slow, the speed problems were mostly down to the HDD speed. When we replaced this and imaged the OS onto the new drive it was fine.

ukSleek · 25 Jan 2011 at 21:57

If you can try upgrading to 2gig ram

doopydug · 26 Jan 2011 at 08:30

Thanks for the advice guys - I will upgrade the ram as I have spare lying around and we were gonna put ina new hard drive anyway